


Faultlines

by MajorTrouble



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eskel to the rescue!, Geralt and his bad planning, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Jaskier, Just so much magic, Kidnapping, M/M, Magic, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slavery, Torture, non-canon compliant, there's a war going on did you know?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorTrouble/pseuds/MajorTrouble
Summary: It wasn’t supposed to end like this.Every epic story, every beautiful ballad had a happy ending. The lovers reunited, the villain was vanquished, and all the players lived happily ever after. No one died - well, no one who wasn’t supposed to - and heartbreak was a fleeting thing that was mended by the last page of the story or the last note of the song.Not like this.---Jaskier was following the plan, he really was. But then he got himself kidnapped - twice - and has to rely on others to come rescue him - again. Eskel is not going to be pleased and Geralt is going to get his "I told you so" face and Yennefer - well the witch didn't need any more reasons to poke fun at him, but here he is, chained up in some horrible castle with nothing but his Songs. Hopefully one of them finds him before he starves to death.Just because he's immortal doesn't mean his body can't die.
Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	Faultlines

**Author's Note:**

> Well hello there. I had an idea, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. 

Every epic story, every beautiful ballad had a happy ending. The lovers reunited, the villain was vanquished, and all the players lived happily ever after. No one died - well, no one who wasn’t supposed to - and heartbreak was a fleeting thing that was mended by the last page of the story or the last note of the song. 

Not like this. Not surrounded by burning fields and the ravenous calling of carrion birds. Not bound hand and foot, thrown unceremoniously into an overcrowded wagon. Not covered in blood and soot, too tired to do much more than try to stave off the tears. 

_It wasn’t supposed to end like this_ , Jaskier thought to himself. The wagon lurched under him and he curled tighter into the tiny space he’d eked out for himself in the corner. Solid wooden walls boxed in the two dozen other people crammed in with him, the only exit a heavy wooden door at the rear of the wagon with a barred window that let in just enough of the weak light from outside to show that it was still day. He had briefly glimpsed the faces of the people around him earlier, but the lack of response to his entrance - other than a brief shuffle of chained feet and hands - and the deep silence gave him little hope. The blank looks and hunched shoulders told the story of people looking just to survive. To avoid notice. To avoid noticing. 

The only saving grace of this whole sorry mess he’d found himself in was that no one had recognized him. Not the soldiers in the woods who had ambushed him and stole his horse and stabbed him in the shoulder. Not the woman in the barn who had found him passed out in the hayloft, bleeding all over the winter’s harvest. And now, not the slavers who had been scouring the edges of the battlefield near Sodden hunting easy money. 

None of them had recognized him as Jaskier the Bard, companion to the White Wolf. Otherwise they may have had a different outcome in mind for him.

He’d still been light headed and dizzy from blood loss, as well as lack of water and food, and he should have stayed put. Should have heeded the woman’s advice and stayed in the hayloft, but instead he’d slipped away in the very early hours of morning, thinking to avoid any more arguments.

The plan had been simple. Well, as simple as plans involving a bard, a Witcher, a Sorceress, and a Child of Surprise could be. All he needed to do was make it to the border with Temeria before nightfall three days hence. Instead, he’d stumbled onto the aftermath of a gruesome battle, the sheer size of which boggled his mind. Acres of forest and grasslands were scorched to bare rock. The burnt bits of skeletal remains lay in piles interspersed with twisted pieces of metal armour and weapons. The air reeked with the overwhelming burn of ozone, that distinct remnant of magic he knew only too well. 

He was, after all, a creature of magic. Not that anyone would know to look at him. It was a subtle thing, only noticeable to those who already knew. A loophole he exploited to no end, wrapping the knowledge around himself like a cloak so that he was perceived by all as merely human. A harmless bard. Music and mischief poured out of him like a waterfall, tempered by years of use and practice. And he was old. _Old as balls_ , his mind interjected, unhelpfully. But not impervious to wounds, as his shoulder was currently attesting, and he gritted his teeth as he was jostled by the movements of the wagon, which sent stabbing pains through the still healing wound. 

He would survive this. As he had survived so many things before. He had to.

The wagon continued its slow, lurching path for several days, the passage of time marked by the light coming through the barred window in the door and the occasional stops for food and rest. They were allowed out at night to huddle together in a single tent on the hard ground, completely surrounded by their captors. That first night Jaskier was roughly separated from the group and his shoulder cleaned and bandaged. He slept in the healer’s tent, lest he contract a fever and die. No sense infecting the rest of the merchandise, he was told with a shrug. 

At least they were going in the same direction he wanted to - North. 

North to the slave markets.

*

Two weeks passed before they crossed the border into Kerack. In that time, Jaskier had managed to befriend most of the people in the wagon and convinced them to like him as well. Children were always easiest. He could still sing, and their guards didn’t punish them for that at least. Talking was forbidden, as well as direct eye contact, but Jaskier taught the children all the rhyming songs he knew, in Elven and Skellige and even old Redanian, which hadn’t been spoken in nearly two thousand years. It made the days and nights more bearable. 

He had no idea how he was going to get out of this, but when he saw the flock of crows perching on the fences surrounding the slave market, he began to have hope again. Sitting in the pen behind the scaffold, he whistled a little jig, tapping the tips of his bound hands together in time. Eventually, all eight of the children joined him, humming and tapping along, as he knew they would. Their captors cast them a baleful glare, but didn’t stop them. Perhaps they thought these talents would fetch a higher price from the quickly gathering crowd. 

After the third repeat, Jaskier started humming a countermelody and watched as the crows started to get restless. They flapped their wings, cawing in a loud chorus, nearly drowning out the noise of the crowd. The slavers were acting a bit more disconcerted now, talking lowly amongst themselves, their attention drawn to the agitated birds. A few started walking towards them, waving their hands in an effort to force the birds away from the market. 

The birds had other ideas. 

They rose in a cloud over the slavers and buyers, the sound of their cries drowning out the yelling and screaming of the crowd below as they swooped down, biting and scratching at unprotected faces and hands. The cloud seemed to writhe and grow as it moved up and around through the air, black feathers and blacker beaks gleaming in the late rays of the sun. 

Chaos consumed the market. The crowd screamed and ran. The tide of crows broke like a wave, roiling and swirling through the crowd, leaving trails of blood in its wake. The slavers tried to rally themselves against the onslaught, armed with swords and crossbows, but they made little progress and were quickly beaten back by the onslaught. They hurried to find shelter back in their caravan, barely glancing at their captives huddled together in the tent behind the auction block. 

The captives who remained wholly untouched by the madness of the crows, using the ensuing lack of attention to free themselves from their bonds and slip through the pen and out into the fading rays of sun. Jaskier watched as the crows drove away every other living thing from the market, attacking and pecking at anything that threatened them. He continued to hum the little melody as they settled back down, now covering the ground and platform of the market, ruffling feathers and cawing triumphantly. 

One caught his eye, as it bounced across the blood and dirt packed ground. It cawed, cocking its head to look at him with one dark eye before ruffling its wings and bobbing down to touch its beak to the earth in three distinct pecks. 

He grinned, inclining his head back to it before it took flight to disappear amongst its kin. Crows had ever been his allies. 

Quickly he disposed of his own bonds and fled the holding pen, going in the opposite direction of the rest of the potential slaves. In his heart he wished them the best of luck, but there was very little else he could do for them at this stage. He needed to get very far away very quickly and as luck would have it, the caravan’s horses were still picketed far enough away from the main grouping of wagons that it was an easy thing to tack one up, mount, and point its head away from the town. 

It took him three more days to get to the rendezvous location. He stopped twice along the way. Once to sneak into a sleeping merchant’s wagon and steal as much food as he could carry, and once to scrub himself clean in an ice-cold river that left him gasping and shivering.

He didn’t expect anyone to actually be there - he was two weeks and four days late after all - but he stopped at the burnt out cottage anyway. Something, some feeling in his chest, tugged him up the broken cobblestone path and towards the door. Hope flared like sunbeams, warming his limbs and suffusing him with feelings of relief and joy.

By this point in his long, long life, he really should have known better.

As soon as his hand touched the soot-blackened frame of the door there was a whip-crack of magic and the nauseating swoop in his stomach of being sucked into a portal. Thankfully, he dropped the reins of his horse before it got dragged through along with him. 

On the other side of the portal he landed sprawled out on his front, desperately trying not to vomit. He had just enough energy to hum a discordant note that made the closing portal snap shut faster and zap its caster with an unexpected static-like shock. There was a cry like a startled cat and Jaskier gritted his teeth in grim triumph: mischief and music was a sometimes satisfying combination. He didn’t get time to savour it, however, as he was rudely dragged up to standing by two heavily armed guards. Somehow he managed to get his feet up under himself so he at least had some dignity when facing his captor. 

Who turned out to be someone he’d never seen before. Dressed in the mottled black armour with the emblazoned sun of Nilfgaard, the woman standing in front of him had the impassive countenance and calculating eye of a seasoned commander. That she appeared to be no more than twenty was a bit disconcerting. She seemed to be sizing him up, trying to figure out what kind of a threat or help he would be before then deciding what to do with him.

Jaskier decided to help her along in the only way he knew how. 

“Good day to you, my lady commander! I will admit that you have me at quite the disadvantage as I was only looking for a place to shelter for the night and therefore am quite shocked to find that the doorway I stumbled through did not, in fact, lead into the husk of a dilapidated cottage, but rather into this rather better-kept stone-walled room! And whilst I am ecstatic to be given the opportunity to sleep under what I assume will be a less water permeable roof, I would ask instead that maybe I be returned whence I came? I think there may have been a bit of a misunderstanding as I am but a humble traveller and don’t think - “

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” the Lady Commander finally interrupted him. Her voice was deep and melodious and slightly amused. With her arms crossed over her chest, he could see the age-worn pommel of the sword strapped at her hip as it shifted with her movements. Someone who was used to wielding the weapon, then, not just for show. 

His own estimations of her were changing and morphing by the second. He wasn’t sure he’d be making it out of this encounter entirely in one piece. 

“Well, uh, I’m not sure that’s accurate - “ he tried to recover, but she uncrossed her arms and stepped towards him and he snapped his jaw shut, suddenly sensing it was in his best interests to be quiet.

“Because if you were thinking, you would wonder why I would allow just anyone to touch the spell that brought you here, directly to me. I would end up with an entire keep full of humble travellers, now wouldn’t I?” She paused, one eyebrow raised, as if awaiting an answer. 

Jaskier nodded slowly. He suddenly didn’t like where this was going. 

“Exactly. So, I made sure it would only activate if certain _humble travellers_ touched it. You, for instance. Jaskier the Bard. The famous bard, it so happens. Although that is not your real name of course. Wouldn’t want the Earl de Lettenhove knowing what his eldest son is up to or, more pointedly, who he associates with, now would we?” Her grin was that of a friend, a co-conspirator in some silly secret, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she threw in a wink. Instead, she stepped out of his space and went back to eyeing him critically. 

He knew there’d be no bluffing his way out of this, and no convenient crows to descend on her to help. It wasn’t as if he needed to be worried about the Earl knowing who he was. He was fully aware of who he’d adopted into his family - the Lettenhoves had kept Jaskier’s entire life a secret for centuries untold. No, Jaskier was worried that this commander would use him against the Earl in some way. And he’d rather destroy himself than let that happen. 

“Good,” she said, like he’d agreed to something. He supposed he had, in a way. “I have a very simple set of questions. You will answer them truthfully.”

Jaskier took a deep breath, intimately aware that he was still being held immobile between the two silent guards. No bluffing. “And if I answer your questions? Truthfully?”

The commander tilted her head to one side, considering. “I’ll allow you the choice of being locked in a cell until the end of this war and at the mercy of whosoever comes out on top. Or, a quick and painless death.” She shrugged. “The outcome is much the same, all things considered.” 

The nauseous feeling had returned to the pit of his stomach, despite the immediate lack of portal. Which reminded him - where was the mage that had brought him here? This commander was going to want to know that whatever spilled out of his mouth was the truth and to do that she needed a magic user. But there were only the four of them currently occupying the barren stone room. 

Something clicked into place. No wonder she looked so young. 

He sighed, hunching his shoulders in defeat. “All right, my lady commander, ask your questions. I’m sure I most likely don’t know the answers, but at least you’ll know I’m being truthful.” This last he spoke whilst looking her directly in the eye, using the tiniest spark of his own innate magics to insert the chorus to _Toss a Coin_ into her surface thoughts. Now it would be stuck there for a few long hours, irritating and distracting her.

Mischief and music. 

“I’m so glad you agree. Let’s begin.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank-you so much for reading! Your comments and kudos give me life.


End file.
